blogs: what is that?

Why is there blogspot at the end of your website? What is that?
Blogspot is one of dozens of websites offering free and/or paid weblog services.

Okayyyy – what does that mean?
Just like there are many different email services – Yahoo – Hotmail – Xtra – Oyster – there are dozens of different sites where you can easily create and update weblogs.

Keep it real simple: what’s a weblog?
A weblog – or blog – is just another website. In terms of how it compares, blogging shows similar improvement to websites as email did to fax – providing a much more adaptable, faster and easier way of communicating.

blogs: question and answer

Time to read: 9 minutes. Promise.

How can I follow this proposal and not lose track?
Right click on links and open links in a new page. Or press ctrl+H and look under history for pages under http://cookislands.blogspot.com - helpful hint – read the whole page before clicking on any links.
What are the benefits of this proposal to Island Hopper?
Higher rankings in all search engines.

You mean more business?
Ae.

Haven’t we heard this before?
Yes, many thousands of services make this promise, as more than 4,000,000 pages from a Google search will slowly tell you. Nearly all of them promise high-tech ways to optimise search engines results. Google says little of this works.

What makes your promise any different?
Avaiki does not know the first thing about high-tech website ranking search engine optimisation. Our expertise is in low-tech, easy ways to boost rankings.

How?
By providing local clients with tools to create what search engines value more than anything else: fresh, unique content.

Why is this important?
Because search engines like Google tell us that!

That link looks like lots of bla bla bla -  what are the most important bits?This bit -  “Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”

What does this mean to us?
It means writing skills are more important to Island Hopper than high-tech search engine optimisation tricks – Avaiki can help develop writing skills and simple tools to get that writing online.
What tools?
Email-based weblog sites, like this one.

What skills?
Encouraging Island Hopper staff to trust their own voice – authentic news and views from a wide range of Cook Islanders. Not slick PR copy. Real voices. Our best “trick” is to ask people about their experiences and, when they finish a sentence say “stop – write that down!”

Okay, what is the end result and how will that make money for Island Hopper?
You’ll have to slow down and concentrate – just for a minute! End result of this proposal from Avaiki for Island Hopper is dozens of new webpages with fresh content all linking back to your website. As weeks become months, then years, dozens become hundreds, thousands and then tens of thousands of web pages. Search engines like Google look for links more than anything else, rating unique pages higher than anything else – meaning higher search engine rankings, more unique “hits” – more unique customers – more sales – more money.

So this is a long-term project?
Sure. So is Island Hopper!

Which means long-term expense for Island Hopper?
No. Our focus on counterpart trainers means we train your staff, who train others.

Other reasons?
Avaiki is committed to promotion of all forms of independent journalism, including emerging trends towards “we media” – communities writing their own “news” not just information gatekeepers like newspapers, radio and TV.

Is this the strategic advantage you were talking about?
Yes. Other tourism operators may continue spending thousands of dollars on the kind of slick PR marketing – yawn – that increasingly sophisticated tourists have seen and heard many, many times before. Island Hopper can surf ahead of the “we media” wave just by helping its local client base build unique content.

Won’t others start doing the same thing?
Of course. In fact, Avaiki will encourage it as a way of attracting higher-spending geo-tourists to the country and region as a destination. However, Island Hopper can stay ahead by starting before anyone else and continuing to add content.

Is this one of those unique, once-in-a-lifetime offers my mum warned me about?
Think of it this way – remember email? Remember how much easier that made life, in terms of promotion and communication? Now imagine your email list is anyone who types the world “holiday” into a search engine.

Okay – but training others means we lose control over what other people write - what happens if people start writing stuff that reflects poorly on us as a destination?
Island Hopper can provide context, background and rankings of its own. Potential online clients will be intrigued – like the Galapagos site – and want to read more.

Yeah, right.
Old school: sex sells. New school: Truth sells.

publishing revolution: blogs

So what are blogs all about?
My copy of Microsoft Encarta says there is “nothing new” about blogs. They are right. Blogs are ‘just’ more web pages on the internet.

If blogs are “nothing new” why should we be excited about them?
Because – for the first time – “tools to automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible to a much larger population,” according to the publicly editable enyclopedia, wikipedia.

What existing skills?
If you know how to use email, you can blog.

Is it that simple?
Sure, there is a bit of stuffing around in the set up stage but not much more than signing up for a Yahoo or Hotmail account. No HTML or techie stuff needed.

Hmmm – what do mainstream media think of blogs?
Try the Guardian newsaper’s latest story on the blog-based publishing revolution for an indication of how quickly this is taking off and why it reports one site as saying a blog is created “every second.”

tying tourism to a sustainable future

Is tourism in the Cook Islands failing?

Continued explosive growth in visitor numbers is not matched with turnover generated from their arrival. In fact, revenue levels are falling, adding to existing concerns about pollution and resident population loss.

Answers lie in identifying the smallness of the Cook Islands tourism industry as one of its strongest assets, not it’s biggest weakness.

tourism's short term salvation

Short term salvation of the Cook Islands tourism industry may literally be a few key strokes away.

Emergent technologies like web logs offer free and easy opportunities for industry players of all sizes direct and early access to potential visitors. Simple ad services like Google AdSense provide cheap e-commerce follow up to locally generated content.

Key word here is “content.”

tourism promotion: millions for what?

Private and public sectors spend millions of dollars every year on traditional marketing services for the Cook Islands tourism industry.

Television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertising attempt to entice visitors with offers of a holiday that provides the “true recipe for paradise.” Glossy brochures, and promo videos make similar promises. Static websites should now be considered part of the same traditional marketing mix, competing bravely in a world of slick marketing slogans and sophistocated consumers.

Largely missing from this mix are real people, with real stories.

tourism: why real stories?

Why are real stories important to the Cook Islands tourism industry?

New website owners report the common experience of a rush of hits in the early stages, tapering steadily away to almost nothing. Fact is, search engines like Google value fresh content over any other input. There is no other way to generate sustainable return from a website. Unfortunately, most website owners put off updating “the website” because it is a painfully complicated process.

At the same time, they send out responses via email to inquiries on a daily basis, information which could be adapted to web with minimal effort using existing skills and tools.

tourism promotion: using existing tools

Most of the tools needed to strategically realign the marketing mix of the Cook Islands tourism industry already exist.

Most if not all tourism players know how to email. A few already promote their activities via email newsletters. Emergent technologies like web logs are readily updateable via email, including text, photos and even video, the latter known as video logs or vlogs for short. Most – not all – tourism players know how to tell great, true-life stories. Indeed, a large part of each working day is taken up in telling compelling and often humorous true-life tales from the tourism industry. Each one of these stories is worth a thousand slick PR slogans.

We already have a rich abundance of story-tellers, and modern story telling tools. We need those people to be given a small range of skills to use those tools and stories in fresh and exciting new ways.

tourism promotion: proposal cost

Proposed here is a partnership between this news agency, Avaiki, and forward focused tourism operators.

In effect, seed funding is sought to develop this proposal into a working model that can be used across the industry and throughout the nation. Avaiki has already spent most of the last year investigating emergent web technologies and seriously needs to begin recouping some of its time investment. Somewhere, sometime, someone, in other words, needs to open a chequebook.

Upfront minimal fees of $5,000 are sought to develop these concepts further over the next quarter or 13 weeks for an agreed range of outputs.

tourism promotion: outputs and outcomes

Outputs and outcomes can begin at two levels: tactical and strategic.

Strategic: Selected industry players updated on emergent technologies. Selected industry personnel interviewed and identified as key resource people. Outlining and funding sources for training programmes. Training of key resource people as counterpart trainers. And tactical outputs: weekly training sessions for industry stakeholders on emergent technologies like web logging. In plain language terms, this means training someone/s as a counterpart/s in not just simple internet technologies but also simple writing techniques for the web.

Within 12 months, assuming success in the concept stage, the Cook Islands could become renown as a destination with a vibrant and transparent tourism industry, rather than just another sun-fried beachcomber industry in the tropical zone claiming “paradise” status.